“Colonels As Parenting Students” brings first-ever parking spaces for pregnant students to Nicholls State

Nicholls State University’s student-led organization, CAPS– Colonels as Parenting Students– has recently completed an initiative to bring a historic 5 parking spots for pregnant students to the local campus.

CAPS is dedicated to bringing important support to university students with the ultimate responsibility of parenthood, achieving this goal through resource fairs, and most recently, their new parking spots for expectant mothers.

“This was one of the first projects I wanted to work on with CAPS. I remember a several-month period where I had to bring my 4-year-old son with me to class while I was pregnant with my daughter, because I didn’t have a babysitter,” explained Jenna Beber, CAPS founder. “There were days where I would have to sit in the grass while walking from my parking spot to class because I was that exhausted. I was struggling with it so much, I knew other expectant students were, too.”

Photos provided.

Thanks to the efforts of Beber and CAPS, there are now five installed parking spaces for expectant students, to help shorten their walk from the parking lot to class as they deal with the physical challenges of pregnancy.

“It feels incredible to accomplish this. I’ve had so many moms contact me and say this is something they could’ve used two years ago, or five years ago, or even thirty years ago,” said Beber. “It’s good to know our pregnant students at Nicholls won’t have to think about this being a problem– we’ve already thought of them.”

One in five college students in the United States are parenting students, with only 2% of teen mothers graduating college before the age of thirty. Initiatives such as CAPS are working to raise that percentage of graduates and support expectant mothers on their educational journey.

For more information on Colonels As Parenting Students (CAPS), please visit their Facebook page.